Would you like to read James McNaught’s novel Sinking Sand”? click here: Sinking Sand
(The views expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
Ezra 4:1–5, “Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the LORD God of Israel; Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither. But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the chief of the fathers of Israel, said unto them, Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the LORD God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us. Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building, And hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.”
The people who were sent to Israel to replace the original people from the northern kingdom, that is the Samaritans, heard what was going on in Judah. (2 Kings 17: 24-41) They believed that they worshipped the true God of Heaven but they just worshipped a syncretism of their old gods and the God of Israel. They wanted to join with Judah in rebuilding the Temple but the leaders of the returnees refused them. These leaders knew that it was very easy to be seduced away from the True God of Heaven into worshipping other gods. They also knew that Israel’s major problem, to that time, had been worshipping strange gods. If Judah joined in with the other people it wouldn’t be very long before Judah started worshipping strange gods again and they would have to go into another Exile. On the other hand, the people from Samaria were upset because they wanted to be part of the Lord’s true people. When they were rejected, the Samaritans did everything they could to stop the Jews from rebuilding the Temple. They even hired lobbyists to pursue their case in the Persian capital.
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